Tweet
Released by: Encore Films
Released on: 11/11/2006
Director: Jean Rollin
Cast: Brigitte Lahaie, Alain Duclos, Alain Plumey, Dominique Journet, Bernard Papineau, Rachel Mhas, Vincent Gardere
Year: 1980
The Movie:
It's saying something when, in a filmography full of odd pictures, Night Of The Hunted stands out as one of the more unusual films that Jean Rollin has made. It's not quite horror, not quite eroticism and not quite science fiction but it definitely manages to incorporate bits and pieces of those genres, spinning them with a 'uniquely Rollin' surrealist angle.
A man named Richard (Vincent Gardere) is driving down a remote and dimly lit road one night when he comes across a beautiful young woman (Brigette Lahaie of numerous XXX movies as well as Rollin classics like Fascination and The Grapes Of Death) dressed in white standing beside a large tree. He stops and once she falls down by the car he picks her up and takes her home so that he can help her. What he doesn't realize is that there's another woman, Veronique (Dominique Journet of Zeffirelli's La Traviata), nearby is obviously traumatized and standing in the woods alone and naked.
Once he has her back at his place, they talk and he finds out that she's got some serious short term and long term memory issues - she knows that her name is Elysabeth but she can't remember what happened even minutes ago. Regardless, they are obviously into one another and it doesn't take long for the two of them to lose their clothes and engage in a very prolonged lovemaking session. Things are looking up for both of them until Richard leaves for work the next morning and, pretty much out of nowhere, Elysabeth is basically forced by a doctor (Bernard Papineau of Claude Chabrol's This Man Must Die) and his assistant to go back to a strange mental hospital (presumably the one from which she escaped in the first place).
Richard, having fallen for her, decides to follow her in hopes that he can save her and once he's there he finds that both Elysabeth and Veronique have been brought back as they're suffering from a sort of degenerative memory loss. Neither Veronique or Elysabeth remember their time in the woods but soon enough they once again team up to try and escape from the hospital, afraid that the doctor in charge will murder them if they stay. If things weren't complicated enough, there's a deranged man roaming the hospital killing people (seemingly at random) and various employees and patients are getting it on.
Slow and dreamlike almost to a fault, Night Of The Hunted is a strange film. Characters don't always act logically and at times the plot seems to be disregarded in favor of atmosphere and the chance for the camera to simply soak up the locations. That being said, if you don't mind the surrealist aspects or the fact that this time the story comes second, it is rather well done. Lahaie is not only completely gorgeous to look at (and frequently in her birthday suit) but she's also a solid actress in the traditional sense as well. She does do a very good job of portraying that confusion and fear that her character would likely feel while dealing with what transpires in the picture and she brings a doe-eyed sense of childlike naivety to the role that you probably wouldn't expect from an adult film actress. Gardere and Journet are also quite decent in their parts; with Journet rivaling Lahaie in terms of just how flat out spacey she looks and acts at times.
With much of the movie taking place in the 'hospital' it is interesting that Rollin chose an old office building to stand in. There's a very impressive sense of gloom hanging over the locale and it works in the movie's favor, giving the movie a similar tone to the one that Cronenberg managed to elicit from the apartment building where he shot Shivers. It doesn't take long for the viewer to understand exactly why Elysabeth and Veronique want out of this place, for if it isn't overtly sinister right off the bat there is a very definite darkness to the building.
While the lack of vampires and the decidedly non-gothic location shooting might make this one less a typical Rollin film than other, better known works like Les Frisson Des Vampires or La Morte Vivante, it is certainly ripe with many of the quirks that make his movies so interesting. The dream like atmosphere, the surrealism, the color schemes and the pacing all conjure up moments from some of his better-known works. The combination of the bits and pieces used to put this movie together might put some people off, for those familiar with the way Rollin makes his movies it's certainly worth checking out.
Video/Audio/Extras:
Despite a few scratches (mostly noticeable during the first few minutes of the movie) and some mild print damage present throughout, this is a very nice transfer. There are some compression artifacts present in the darker but they're not overpowering. Color reproduction is accurate and nicely saturated without looking too bright for its own good and there's a really nice level of both foreground and background detail present here.
For a film more than three decades old that was low budget to begin with, the French language Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono track sounds pretty solid on this release. There is some mild background hiss in a few scenes and if you listen for them you'll pick out the occasional pop here and there but for the most past, things sound all right. Dialogue is fairly clean and pretty consistent. The extensive selection of optional subtitles for the film includes choices in English, Dutch, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Norwegian and Polish. A German language Dolby Digital 2.0 dubbed track is also provided for the feature
The best of the extra features is an audio commentary, in French with optional subtitles, featuring Jean Rollin and Brigitte Lahaie. Also included on the second disc is a selection of 'harder' scenes from an alternate cut of the picture. Brigitte Lahaie shows up for an interesting on-camera interview. Alain Plumey, who played Alain in the film, also shows up for an interview conducted in the Museum of Eroticism. A third interview features long time Rollin collaborator, Lionel Wallman. Rounding out the extra features are the French theatrical trailer and a generous still gallery of production photos and promotional materials. Inside the packaging is a thirty-two-page full color booklet containing an essay on the film from Jean Rollin himself as well as a few interesting stills from the movie.
The Final Word:
Encore continues to impress with their Rollin special edition DVDs and their release of Night Of The Hunted is just as good as you'd expect it to be. The audio and video are quite nice and the extras are both plentiful and interesting and it's great to see Lahaie's involvement here as well as the director's.